First time visitors to Cyprusscene.com

Piers Oakey and his family of sheep and goats

At that time he lived in Karakum and as my sister and I were renting a property in Karakum while waiting for our respective bungalows to be finished, it was an easy option, having no transport initially, to walk down to Taner’s Terrace Restaurant for a meal, and this is where we met Piers for the first time.

Over the years I have bumped into Piers in various supermarkets etc. and during this time he moved from Karakum to Karmi.

I have been a Facebook friend for a long time so have seen various postings he has made and recently I was intrigued to see him with new born goats (kids). This aroused my interest and so I asked if Chris and I could meet up with him to see what it was all about.

Arrangements were made and we visited Piers at his house in Karmi (about as far up the mountain as you can go!). He had already told us that he was very indebted to Oguz who looks after not only the goats but sheep as well, and he arranged for Oguz to be there when we visited.

What a surprise we had when we entered the house, we were greeted by a lamb and a kid (goat), who spent a long time with us as we talked. They were so cute, I have never had such close contact with lambs or goats in my life and it was fascinating to see them wandering around, very inquisitive, and enjoying being petted from time to time.

Piers bought a rather run down farm of 8 donums in Kayalar some 8 months ago, which is surrounded by a vast amount of free land. With the help of Oguz he then proceeded to start his flock of sheep and herd of goats and there are now 65 sheep, 50 lambs, 90 goats and 30 kids, with more on the way. They have recently taken on a Kangal puppy, which they have named Thor. Oguz insists he will live at the farm as he does not want it to be a house dog, it is to be a working dog once trained.

Oguz told us that the Government want to retain the image of the country with the continuation of livestock and so there is a lot of help given, especially with a subsidy for the animals. With the adjacent land there is a 20TL per annum rental fee for the growing of crops for animal feed to encourage the continuation of sheep and goats in the country.

All of the sheep and goats have to go through veterinary checks and Oguz has his hands full looking after all of this administration work.

Piers told us that he bought some land in Lapta and found that there was a restaurant which came with the sale. This was previously JK’s and Oguz has now taken it over and it has been re-named Ozzie’s Place. How he finds time to do all of this I will never know.

There is still much to do to make the farm better for the animals but a start has been made with accommodation for the young lambs and kids. The previous farmer made cheese and the facilities are still available for this so Oguz is very keen to pursue this as well and introduce his own cheese at the restaurant.

We had such an interesting couple of hours talking to Piers and Oguz and were so pleased to meet a couple of the new additions to his farm.